Fires in the Amazon are devastating this year as 1,330 square miles of rainforest has been lost since January.

By Karen Longwell

August 23, 2019

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A firefighter works during a wildfire near Robore, Santa Cruz region, eastern Bolivia on August 22, 2019. Neighboring Peru, which contains much of the Amazon basin, announced it was "on alert" for wildfires spreading from the rainforest in Brazil and Bolivia.STR/AFP/Getty Images

The fires raging through the Amazon could mean huge losses to the planet’s biodiversity, including the death of a cannabis strain that has survived for almost 500 years.

The fires are particularly devastating this year as 1,330 square miles of rainforest—already under threat from deforestation and climate change—has been lost since January alone, The Washington Post reports.

Among the unique plant life threatened by the fires is a cannabis strain, the Brazil Amazonia, which grows wild in the Amazon rainforest. The strain has a potent sativa effect initially that becomes more sedative as time passes, Delicious Seeds reports.

Slaves brought cannabis to Brazil and later the plant was used medicinally. Indigenous people used cannabis to “cure sick people,” the government report stated.

A 1955 report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime notes the widespread use of cannabis, which grows wild in the northern region of Brazil. The most popular form of consumption was smoking the flowering stems in a pipe.

Cannabis is illegal in Brazil, but the government has approved some therapeutic uses, The Brazilian Report stated.

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